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Violence in the Media and Children

Imagine yourself when you were 4, watching your favorite television show, Power Rangers. It made you feel powerful, aggressive, and invincible. When you and your friends would play, you reenacted the moves you saw in the show: kicking, punching, and shoving. One of your friends gets hurt, but it was only playing; you didn't mean to hurt anyone! After the wound is all bandaged up, you just keep playing like nothing happened. This is a common occurrence with children after watching violent media. This also occurs in children playing violent video games. Findings from University of Missouri say that "brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression" (ScienceDaily). In their studies, after the participants played the violent video games, they were shown a picture of violence. The participants had reduced brain response to the photos. This reduced response to the photos predicted aggression levels, where the smaller the brain response to the violent photos, the more aggressive the participants were. The video games that are popular now are mostly violent video games, and surveys show that an elementary school child spends more than 40 hours a week playing these violent games (ScienceDaily). Most of these popular violent video games encourage the participation in the violence, therefore, desensitizing the children's brains to the sight of violent behavior. In another article, researchers suggest "performing violent acts in video games may be more contributing to children's aggression than passively watching violent acts on television" (Tomkins). There are games that promote prostitution, theft, and violent behavior, such as Grand Theft Auto. The fact that, in video games, you have to act out the violence, makes violent actions are more familiar to the children and there are no consequences for it, leading to the wrong idea. From these findings, we can conclude that violence in media cause children to be more desensitized to violence and more familiar with how to act out violent actions without the consequences there are in real life.